WATCH LIVE: Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Mamdani meet in the Oval Office

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump called New York City Mayor-elect Zahran Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic” and a “completely crazy job.” Mamdani described the Trump administration as “tyrannical” and described himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”

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So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be an awkward and combustible affair. The White House said Mamdani arrived shortly before the meeting began, and chose to enter quietly rather than wade through crowds of journalists who were waiting for him.

Despite months of portraying each other as arch rivals, the Republican president and the new Democratic star have signaled their openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they both called home.

Read more: Mamdani says he wants to talk to Trump about affordability during the Oval Office meeting

Trump said, in an interview with Fox News Radio on Friday morning, that he expected the meeting to be “completely civil.”

“I think we’ll get along well,” he said. “Look, we’re looking for the same thing. We want to make New York strong.”

He said the mayor-elect has a “different philosophy” but said he gives him “a lot of credit” for his campaign and said: “He ran a good race.”

When Trump was asked about some of Mamdani’s comments that directly challenged him, he said: “I’m a little hard-headed, too, in all fairness.”

Read more: Trump plans to meet with New York Mayor-elect Mamdani and says they will “find a solution”

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who will take office in January, said he sought to meet with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more accessible to everyone. Trump said he might want to help him — even though he falsely called Mamdani a “communist” and threatened to withdraw federal funds from his hometown.

But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of bipartisan agreement.

The two men make a suitable political figure for each other, and confronting the other could motivate their supporters.

Trump was looming large in this year’s mayoral race, and on the eve of the election, he endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting that the city had “zero chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani wins. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized U.S. citizen after graduating from college, and said he would be arrested if he carried out his threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.

Read more: Mamdani tells Trump New York is ready to fight after the president’s threats failed to discourage voters

Mamdani overcame Cuomo’s challenge, calling him a “puppet” of the president and saying he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually achieve his accomplishments.” “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things I believe in,” he declared during one primary debate.

The president, who has long used his political opponents to fire up his supporters, predicted that Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things that has ever happened to our great Republican Party.” While Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment with his victory over Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies sparked infighting, Trump repeatedly described Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party.

For Mamdani, sitting down with the president of the United States provides the state lawmaker, who until recently was relatively unknown, the opportunity to come face-to-face with the most powerful person in the world.

Read more: How Zahran Mamdani rose from Queens lawmaker to mayor of New York

The meeting gives Trump a high-profile opportunity to talk about affordability at a time when he is under increasing political pressure to show he is addressing voters’ concerns about the cost of living.

But this is if the meeting does not become difficult.

An opportunity for some Oval Office drama

It was not immediately clear whether cameras would be allowed into the meeting. Trump’s daily schedule said it would be private, but the president often invites a small “group” of reporters at the last minute.

The president has had some dramatic public confrontations in the Oval Office this year, including a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in March. In May, Trump turned off the lights during his meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video highlighting widely denied claims that South Africa violently oppressed farmers from the country’s white Afrikaner minority.

He watches: Democrats dominate in the first elections since Trump returned to the White House

A senior Trump administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Trump had not given much thought to planning the meeting with the next mayor, but said Trump’s threats to block the flow of federal dollars to New York were still on the table.

Mamdani said Thursday he was not concerned about the president trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him, and said he saw it as an opportunity to make his case, even as he acknowledged there were “many disagreements with the president.”

If the president uses the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely prepared.

Like Trump, he was a relative political outsider, who achieved victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, and who is known for his shrewdness in the limelight and his distinctive use of social media.

Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump grew up — also showed a caustic streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing.

The moment brought to mind Trump’s tactics before his debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with the accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madani in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report.